Bailey is the game's best strike-stealer. With the "buffer" zone shrinking, his framing skills could be mitigated.

SAN FRANCISCO — Justin Verlander understands the strike zone as well as any pitcher in the game, possessing a photographic memory forged by 20 seasons at baseball’s highest level. He noticed ...

Shrinking the zone was occasionally mentioned as a Hail Mary solution while the offense went kaput throughout the 2010s and ...

SEATTLE — The current MLB strike zone has been in place since 1996. The zone itself has remained unchanged for a generation, but there have been adjustments to rules and protocols that have ...

San Francisco Giants right-hander Justin Verlander is frustrated with Major League Baseball after a change they made in the grading of umpires resulted in a tighter strike zone. The buffer zone of ...

Where umpires used to have a “buffer zone” around the strike zone that gave them a couple of inches to work with in the way they were graded, that has now shrunk significantly. Though the zone ...

According to an earlier report from The Athletic, MLB instituted a change on umpires' "buffer zones," an area two inches around the strike zone that gave them leeway on how accurately they were ...